


It Came From the Pacific Ocean!

by buckgaybarnes



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Dimension Travel, Falling In Love, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pleasantville AU, Precursors, Pseudoscience Galore, hermann 'repressed' gottlieb, no knowledge of movie it's based on really required, this is also technically a teen beach movie AU if you think about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25020259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckgaybarnes/pseuds/buckgaybarnes
Summary: Dr. Hermann Gottlieb is the man of Newt's dreams. It's unfortunate, to say the least, that he's a doomed fictional character from the obscure 1957 b-movieIt Came From the Pacific Ocean!.(or: newt gets sucked into a movie, and maybe accidentally changes things a little too much)
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 22
Kudos: 114





	It Came From the Pacific Ocean!

**Author's Note:**

> WOW, so this fic has been a work in progress for way too fucking long (like a YEAR). im not ENTIRELY happy with it but at this point if I don't just post it and get it over with I never will. HOPE U ENJOY!!!!
> 
> again, you don't really have to know anything about the movie pleasantville that's not. like. the basic premise you'd read on the back of a DVD box for it. you should, on the other hand, probably know about the plot of pacific rim if you're reading fan fiction for it, but im not here to pass judgement 
> 
> also I tossed in homages to most of my own personal fav sci fi b-movies so count them if you can

“Working late again, Dr. Geiszler?”

There’s a small _beep_ ; the lab door swings open with an electronic groan. Newt pockets his ID badge, shakes rain off the shoulders of his leather jacket, and smiles politely at the security guard. It’s the one who’s always on duty this time of night. “Yeah,” Newt says. “I have, uh, a few things I have to finish up. I should only be another hour.”

It’s a lie, and they both know it: Newt never stays as little as an hour. He practically lives in the lab. He’d _sleep_ here if they’d let him. The guard returns the smile anyway (though Newt nearly winces at the twinge of sympathy to it he doesn’t even bother hiding). “Right,” he says. “Be sure to lock up behind you.”

“Gotcha,” Newt says. He scurries into his lab before the door can shut on him.

Listen—Newt _doesn’t_ need sympathy. He’s fine. He’s happy. He’s a perfectly normal, well-adjusted adult, who has friends, and a stable job (which provided him with a kickass research lab), and a nice apartment, and who definitely didn’t peak in his early twenties after a childhood spent skipping grades and collecting PhDs like fucking Pokémon.

_Peak_ is being kind. Newt crashed and burned. He was MIT’s wonder kid; where do you _go_ from there, once you’ve tacked on a few years and outgrew _kid_ , if not down? He left graduate school with lackluster social skills, a handful of undiagnosed disorders (personality, anxiety, you name it), and without a single worthwhile interpersonal relationship with anyone who wasn’t related to him, and spent the following decade cycling between various stages of imposter syndrome and plain and simple loneliness. Throwing himself into his work helped. A little. He’s doing good things—he’s helping people—all that grade-skipping and money _wasn’t_ a waste. That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

Newt waits until the guard’s footsteps have receded down the hall before he digs out his latest personal project from the darkest recesses of his supply closet. It’s nothing bad or anything, but he’d rather not have his interns and underlings finding it and making him catalogue shit and user proper scientific method. (Or write him up for, like, stealing moderately expensive company equipment for personal use.) This is Newt’s time to use as he wants.

Then he switches on the small television he keeps on his desk.

When Newt was a teenager, he developed a completely, uh, normal and healthy love of hokey creature features local TV stations would play late at night, usually introduced by some wisecracking host in bad monster stage makeup. He’d watch them while he crammed for finals, or finished up lab work, or sobered up from whatever frat party he managed to sneak into that night for free crap beer. His very favorite—one he committed to both memory _and_ a well-worn video tape, and later bought a DVD of once VCRs became retro, one that comforted him through the lonely friendless nights of his youth—was a 50s flick called _It Came From the Pacific Ocean!_ It was mostly unremarkable, and mostly indistinguishable from other sci-fi of the decade (black and white, bad special effects, military compounds galore), save for one very important reason: Newt was, and is, madly in love with one of the characters.

He finds the local public access station easily, and—just in time for _It Came From the Pacific Ocean!_ ’s black and white title card—kicks back and begins fiddling with his project. Background noise. It’s comforting.

It’s not _really_ love. It’s just a crush. Newt’s first crush. His name is Dr. Gottlieb, and he’s a pretty minor character in the movie: the resident kooky mad scientist type (ridiculous posh accent, chaotic laboratory full of useless movie props, cane he waves around and smacks chalkboards with to prove his points), and he spends half of his screen time giving dire warnings to the stylish young protagonist couple and the aggressively American military types who compose the main cast. No one listens to him, of course, even though he’s right, even though his research ends up helping save the day, and he’s killed off pretty unceremoniously about three-fourths of the way through the movie when a weapon against the monster he designed backfires and his lab is blown up.

Newt’s always liked the look of Dr. Gottlieb. He likes his big glasses on a chain, his funny mouth, his cheekbones, his bad haircut. He likes how passionate he is about his work, even though it’s on dumb, fictional monsters. Maybe especially because it’s on dumb monsters. Newt usually shuts the movie off before Dr. Gottlieb dies, because it makes him too sad; Dr. Gottlieb’s extreme sex appeal aside, he reminds Newt a little too much of himself.

“But, General,” the hunky young protagonist is saying on screen, “what _are_ these things?”

“‘I don’t know, Jim,’” Newt quotes gruffly, not looking up from the screw he’s twisting in, “‘But one thing we know for certain—they’re _not of this world_!’”

Jim’s girlfriend clutches Jim’s arm and gasps in horror. Jim looks on in stoic determination. Dramatic music swells. Ad break.

The fluorescent overhead lights of Newt’s lab flicker, and the local commercial for some organic market that Newt’s been considering visiting does too. “Fuck,” Newt sighs. The storm he caught his bus in is only getting worse, he guesses. If the building loses power, not only will his work be screwed for the night, but Newt will be, too—the heavy lab doors are in-operational without power, as per security precautions, and the assumption that _most_ people don’t work alone after-hours. Major design flaw. Newt should fix that.

There’s a great crack of thunder, and Newt is plunged into darkness.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says again, a little more empathetically.

Before his eyes can even adjust to the dark, there’s a bolt of lightning outside the narrow windows, so bright it illuminates everything, so close the hair on Newt’s arms stands straight up. Newt’s television switches itself back on, but the colors are three times as intense, and the wires of the machine in his hand twisting and vibrating, and (overwhelmed) he shuts his eyes—

—and wakes up on his back.

“What are you doing lying around?” someone says.

“‘M sorry,” Newt says, groggily, rubbing at his eyes. Everything is blurry. (His glasses are missing, he realizes.) A lot brighter, too—it must be daytime. Shit, did he pass out during the storm? On the _floor_? It wouldn’t be the first time, which somehow makes this even more embarrassing. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep here,” he says. “I swear I wasn’t drinking. Lemme—”

“Get up,” the _very_ pushy lab aide continues. “We have work to do!”

“I _know_ , it’s my fucking work we’re doing, chill,” Newt says. Jesus, who hired this guy? Overeager much? Newt definitely wouldn’t have. “Where the hell are my glasses?” A pair is tossed into his hands. “ _Thank_ you.”

He slips them on.

Newt is not in his lab. He’s in _a_ lab, but it’s definitely not his. Newt’s lab isn’t filled with that many smoking beakers, or that many outdated ceiling-high computer screens, or that many strange machines covered in dials and knobs and flashing lights, or _any_ cages of live white mice. Newt’s lab isn’t filled with that many dudes milling about in white labcoats. Newt’s lab—and here’s where the _real_ panic sets in—also isn’t in _black and white_. Neither are Newt’s tattoos, poking out from beneath Newt’s own stark white lab coat. Neither is— “Well?” the lab aide above him says, but when Newt drags his eyes away from his monochrome arms, his monochrome hands, his monochrome fingers, it’s to see a complete (monochrome) stranger. “Are you getting up? Dr. Gottlieb will be here soon.”

“Dr. Gottlieb?” Newt squeaks.

“What’s wrong with him?” another monochrome lab aide says to the first. Another stranger—but Newt can’t help but feel like they’re both oddly familiar. Have they met before? Do they work for Newt’s institute? Is Newt _drugged_ or something? Oh, God, not drugged—the electrical surge from the storm probably fried his brain, and he’s convulsing in death throes over his desk right now—this is just his brain’s bonkers way of dealing with it. Rest in peace Newt. Someone will miss you, probably.

“Bathroom,” Newt croaks. He staggers to his feet. His brain may be in death throes, but maybe some cold water— “I need to use—the bathroom. Where?”

“Bathroom?” the lab aide says. He frowns at Newt.

“Yes, the _bathroom_!” Newt says. “Sinks? Toilets? Whatever the fuck else they have in bathrooms—I don’t know, hand dryers?”

Another blank stare.

“Fine,” Newt says. “ _Cool_. I’ll find it myself.”

But Newt doesn’t find the bathroom: instead, batting away the fretting hands of the lab aides, he turns and walks straight into another scientist.

Newt’s sent sprawling to the floor, right back on his ass; the other scientist sprawls, too, the large stack of papers he was holding flying _everywhere_ , something wooden clattering down to the floor. It’s a pretty painful, and _solid,_ collision for a death-throe-dream. Pretty realistic, even. Newt’s brain must be working overtime.

“ _Shit_ ,” Newt says, at the same time the other guy says, sounding dazed, “Oh, dear.”

“Sorry,” Newt says, scrambling to his feet at once, and gathering up as many of the papers as he can on impulse. Graphs and stats and numbers that make his head swim. He holds out his hand to help the other guy up. Just because this is all fake doesn’t mean he can’t be polite, after all. “Here, let me—”

“Thank you,” the scientist says, posh and clipped, and—taking Newt’s hand with a decidedly delicate air—turns his face up towards Newt.

Newt manages to not stagger back in shock. Only just.

It makes sense, now, why everything seemed so strangely familiar, why Newt could swear he’s been in this room, why he recognized all those nondescript faces—why it’s _monochrome_ , even. Because it’s Dr. Gottlieb. _Newt’s_ Dr. Gottlieb. Doomed side character of 1957’s _It Came From the Pacific Ocean_!, walking and talking and in the flesh in front of him. Blinking at him in confusion behind those big, owlish librarian glasses.

Newt drops Gottlieb’s hand, and his stack of documents. “Excuse me,” he says.

He bolts down the hall in time to make it to the men’s room, where he proceeds to upend the quick dinner of sushi he ate at his bus stop. That feels pretty fucking real, too. So does the cold water he drinks straight from the sink faucet.

He splashes more water on his face and gazes, dizzily, at himself (in his unfamiliar white labcoat) in the mirror. His hair’s shorter—slicked back more neatly, his stubble shaved away, his pierced ears smooth and unadorned, and though his tie, white button-up, and glasses remain intact (more than intact, in fact—the small crack he’s had in the left lens for months has miraculously repaired itself), his skinny jeans aren’t exactly what he’d call _skinny_ anymore. He looks...uncomfortably retro. “Okay,” he tells his reflection, once he’s managed to calm his breathing. “So you’re having a minor psychotic break. You knew this would happen eventually. You work yourself too hard, dude.” It’s better than brain death, isn’t it?

There’s a knock on the bathroom door. One of the lab aides sticks his head in. “Dr. Gottlieb needs you back in the lab,” he says. “It’s very important.”

“Right,” Newt laughs, or maybe sobs. “Back in the lab. Cool!”

He may as well just play along with it. No harm in that.

Gottlieb has righted himself and his papers when Newt—wiping his mouth off on his sleeve—finally manages to drag himself away from the sink, and he’s gesticulating wildly with his clunky cane at some figure he’s drawn on the board. Newt thinks he might recognize it from the movie: it’s Gottlieb’s big plan of attack on the monster. Doomed to fail, of course. "I predict,” he declares, “that the creature will attack the air base _first_ , which shall give us time to ready our defenses before it turns for us. We ought to expect such an attack any day now. Perhaps three days. If—”

“Tomorrow,” Newt blurts out.

Gottlieb stops talking. He turns those blinking, owlish eyes on Newt once more. “I beg your pardon?”

“Uh,” Newt says. He didn’t really mean to open his mouth. It was on impulse, y’know, he just always shouts things at Gottlieb during the movie—mostly advice on how to make it beyond the three-quarters mark. “I just mean… What if the attack was tomorrow? Not three days from now?”

(The attack is tomorrow: first, the creature destroys half of the nearby town, _then_ heads to the air base. Countless civilians die. Gottlieb blames himself for each one. It’s why he doesn’t evacuate the facility when he plans to set off the bomb.)

“Tomorrow,” Gottlieb repeats. He sniffs. “Well—my data does not suggest—”

“They’re animals, man,” Newt says. "Living creatures. They don’t always follow predictions.”

Another unimpressed sniff. “And _who_ are you, exactly?” Gottlieb says. He casts a sour glance up and down Newt, from his slicked hair to his clunky steel-toe boots to the dulled threads of tattoos up his arms; then he lights up with recognition. “ _Oh_! You’re the fellow who toppled into me earlier.”

“Dr. Geiszler,” Newt corrects, sheepishly, because he’s still _kinda_ head over heels for the guy. “But you can call me—well, that doesn’t matter.” He draws himself up straighter. If he has a shot at prematurely swaying a hottie like Gottlieb off the track of guilt-driven martyrdom, hallucination or not, he’s gonna try. “The point is I think you’re wrong. I think you should call to have the town evacuated before the airbase—and, like, _tonight_.”

Gottlieb bristles. "As I said, _Dr. Geiszler_ , my data does not—"

“Yeah, okay,” Newt says, “ _okay_ , but what if you’re wrong? What if it’s tomorrow? Wouldn’t you rather be a little cautious and maybe save an entire town?”

Gottlieb continues to bristle and scowl, until, finally, he clacks over to his great big blackboard, scoops up a handful of chalk, and clacks back over to Newt. He thrusts it out at him. “I’d like very much to see your calculations,” he spits, “since you’re so _terribly_ sure of yourself.”

Dr. Gottlieb wasn’t this bitchy in the movie. Maybe he just needed someone like Newt to, uh, challenge him. Newt snags the chalk and makes a face. “Fine!"

It’s a dumb thing to do, and he knows it the second he walks up to a clean expanse of Gottlieb’s chalkboard. Reason number one: Newt may have excelled in several disciplines, all of which required some small mastery of advanced mathematics, but he still fucking hates math. Reason number two: obviously he can’t prove jack shit. It doesn’t even matter if he can’t prove jack shit, really, because this is a fake world, with fake civilians’ lives on the line, and fake monsters, and fake _math_ , just random variables and equations Gottlieb scrawls across the board and waves his cane at and shouts about—

Newt steadies the chalk. Fake math.

He scribbles a few random lines of something that might be a bastardization of the quadratic formula, throws a few _x_ ’s and _y_ ’s in for good measure, factors random shit, adds a few more generic equations he remembers from undergraduate physics, and sets it all up to equal one. Then he tosses down the chalk and steps back. “See,” he says, with false bravado. “Tomorrow.”

The lab aides murmur amongst themselves as Gottlieb scrutinizes the board. Then Gottlieb’s eyebrows jump in surprise. “By Jove!” he exclaims. “Dr. Geiszler, I fear I owe you a terrible apology. I must contact the general at once. Gentlemen—see to it that Dr. Geiszler is comfortable until I return.”

He and several of his aides hurry from the lab, leaving the rest to stare at Newt in thinly-disguised awe. And some fear. Newt grins at them. “Hi.”

Gottlieb does not return to the lab until past midnight, looking worn and exhausted, and clacks right past where Newt is curled up in a desk chair without so much as a glance. The lab aides all filed out some time ago for bed, but Newt doesn’t exactly have a bedroom here, and—since this is all a weird dream in itself, or something like that, Newt hasn’t totally decided yet, and he’s used to pulling all-nighters—he’s not feeling any particular rush to head to sleep. He watches Gottlieb slowly erase half his chalkboard before he finally makes his presence known. “Uh, hi.”

Gottlieb startles and whirls around, dropping his eraser with a loud clatter. He relaxes visibly when he catches sight of Newt, a fact which does not escape Newt’s notice. “ _Oh_. Dr. Geiszler. I thought you would have gone to bed.”

Newt stretches as he gets to his feet. “Nah,” he says. “I stay up late. I got that, don’t worry.” He picks up the eraser and holds it out to Gottlieb. “Meeting go over well, then?”

Gottlieb nods excitedly. Up close, he’s even cuter, all dark eyelashes and eye crinkles. “The town is being evacuated as we speak, and I’ve already given word to ready our defenses. I can’t thank you enough for your help.”

The smile he gives Newt is lopsided and weak, something clearly unpracticed. Newt’s mouth goes dry nonetheless. “Yeah,” he stammers. “Uh, of course.”

He almost doesn’t notice Gottlieb take the eraser back from him to resume wiping down his chalkboard. “You really ought to go to bed,” Gottlieb says. He has nice hands, too—a little too big for his body, with nice, elegant fingers. “We’ll have a very busy day tomorrow, after all.”

“Right,” Newt says.

Having assumed he’d be spending the night on the lab floor once Gottlieb vacated the premises, Newt’s surprised when his aimless walk down the compound halls leads him straight to a door bearing a tidy little _Geiszler_ plaque. He’s further surprised when he finds a key in his labcoat pocket that fits the lock, and that—when he opens it—it’s to cramped, drab quarters that contain a closet-full of identical pressed white shirts and identical black jeans.

Most importantly, it contains a bed. Newt shucks off some clothing and collapses onto it with a sigh; he’s asleep within minutes.

* * *

In _It Came From the Pacific Ocean!_ , after the monster defies Gottlieb’s predictions and pops up two days early, the hunky hero doesn’t have enough time to ready the military’s first bomb, and the resulting blast leaves the monster unscathed and free to ravage the town as he pleases. The good guys are set back significantly. Lives (mostly, those of stylish teenagers in fast cars) are lost. Gottlieb, bogged down with guilt, sets into motion his plan to unknowingly sacrifice himself for the good of humanity.

Newt oversleeps the attack by about two hours. In his defense, this whole thing has been very disorienting.

He probably would’ve slept longer, too, if Gottlieb himself hadn’t come knocking for him at noon. Even in his muddled, half-asleep state, Newt can tell it’s Gottlieb before he drags himself out of bed and opens the door: the man’s cane has a very particular sound when hit against surfaces, and Newt has seen _It Came From the Pacific Ocean!_ enough times to have ingrained it permanently into his memory. It doesn’t make seeing Gottlieb vibrating with energy in the hallway any less totally fucking bizarre.

“So,” Newt greets him. “Meltdown still going on, then.”

Gottlieb frowns politely. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” Newt says. He leans against the doorframe, trying his best to look cool. “What’s up, Gottlieb?”

What’s up (Gottlieb informs him, drawing himself up excitedly) is this: the monster re-emerged from the ocean shortly before ten in the morning, as Newt predicted it would. It headed straight for the town, as Newt predicted it would, and—after finding it vacated—set its path for the airbase instead, where the giant fucking bomb was waiting for it. “We’ve killed it,” Gottlieb finishes in a rush. “We've _done_ it. I can't believe it.”

“Sick,” Newt says through a yawn.

He’s taken by surprise when Gottlieb suddenly clasps his shoulder. It occurs to Newt, then, that he’s half-naked—stripped down to a pristine undershirt and a pristine pair of white briefs that he wouldn’t be caught dead in back home. Gottlieb doesn’t even seem to notice. It’s a bit of an ego killer, Newt will admit. “I feel as if I ought to thank you again,” Gottlieb says. “If it hadn’t been for you—well, if you’re amenable, I would like very much to promote you to a Head Scientist position alongside myself. Whatever work is left for us to do, I could use your help with.”

He squeezes Newt’s shoulder. Newt feels something funny and warm tighten in his chest. “My help?” he says.

“If you’d kindly come with me, Dr. Geiszler,” Gottlieb says. “And do put some trousers on.”

Newt follows Gottlieb’s lopsided gait down the hallway back to the lab. When he made the opposite walk alone last night, he was too tired to really take in anything, and so spends the time now scrutinizing everything: the uniform grey tile walls, the uniform overhead lights, the occasional harried-looking scientist rushing by them muttering under their breath. Monochrome. So monochrome. “Haven’t you guys thought about painting a wall or two around here?” he says, skimming his hand across the tile. “It could brighten things up a little.”

Gottlieb doesn’t hear him. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. “As you’ve proven yourself a worthy colleague,” he says over his shoulder, pushing open the lab door, “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind terribly having a glance over my work?”

Oh, God. More math. It spans across Gottlieb’s three chalkboards, bewildering and complex and purely nonsensical. “Oh, uh. Sure,” he sighs.

He pretends to scrutinize the chalkboards as Gottlieb hovers over his shoulder. What happens after the airbase attack in the movie? The monster retreats, but returns a few days later, only to be met with Gottlieb’s bomb. All of that has been pretty fucking nullified now, of course, so Newt's not really sure what he's supposed to be looking at here. Gottlieb's calculations on the likelihood of the creature returning from beyond the grave? Of it having a vengeful twin? “All looks...good,” he says.

“That’s certainly a relief,” Gottlieb says.

Newt’s not sure if this is a dream, or if he’s fallen through a rift in the universe, of if some higher power finally decided to make itself known to him in the fucking _weirdest_ way possible. He’s not sure what he’s meant to do here, or if he’s meant to do anything at all, or if what he's already done is enough. Luckily, he knows for sure what he _wants_ to do: he wants to get into Gottlieb’s high-waisted wool pants more than anything in the world.

There’s no time like the present. Or—whatever—1957. Newt turns on the charm and takes a step too close into Gottlieb’s personal space, privately relishing in how Gottlieb doesn’t so much as flinch. “It sure is,” he says. He touches Gottlieb’s arm. “Now, tell me, where can a guy get something to eat around here?”

“Besides the canteen?” Gottlieb says. “Though I suppose their fare leaves _much_ to be desired.”

“Maybe a restaurant?” Newt says. “Or…diner?”

Newt knows there’s a diner in town. During the monster’s first rampage, _It Came From the Pacific Ocean_ ’s hero and his girlfriend take refuge in it, along with a gaggle of other teenagers, when their car is run off the road. Newt always thought the milkshakes looked good. “A diner,” Gottlieb echoes, and his smile finally falters. “Well—I suppose I _know_ of one, but it’s not exactly close. We’d have to drive quite a bit away.”

We’d: they’re already a _we_ in Gottlieb’s head. One step closer. Newt takes a physical step forward, too. “I don’t mind a drive,” he says, and grazes his fingertips over Gottlieb’s shoulder. “I could take us on my motorcycle.”

“Oh, my,” Gottlieb says. “You have a motorcycle?”

Newt considers the question. Even if he doesn’t technically own one, he imagines it wouldn’t be very hard to find one around here he could commandeer. These sorts of movies always have random biker gangs fucking around. “I sure do, baby,” he says. He winks. “What do you think? You, me, dinner tonight?”

Newt’s not an idiot—he knows the average _social values_ of 1957 are significantly further to the right of those of 2019, but there is absolutely no way a guy who dresses and speaks and _acts_ like Gottlieb can be remotely straight. Newt even bought a subscription to a film journal once just to get access to an article someone wrote about queercoding in _It Came From the Pacific Ocean_. He knows what he’s talking about, okay?

But Gottlieb just stares at him blankly. Any and all innuendo Newt hoped he’d interjected into the proposition seems to have sailed right over his head. No sharing milkshake straws and knocking knees in Newt’s near future, then. “I don’t know,” Gottlieb says. “Er—I have a _dreadful_ workload ahead of me tonight, even with...”

“We can multitask,” Newt says. We, we. He flutters his eyelashes, then—because he is, after all, incredibly shameless—adds “I’m _very_ good at handling big loads.”

No reaction from Hermann. 1957, man. Fucking tragic. “Well, I suppose they won’t miss us _too_ terribly,” Hermann finally says.

Newt can work with that.

He meets Gottlieb outside his quarters at six PM exactly. Gottlieb has not changed out of his labcoat. Newt hasn’t changed, either, except he did swap out his own labcoat for a leather jacket he found buried in the back of his closet and add a little more pomade to his hair, in an elaborate attempt to make himself look like a sexy greaser. Unfortunately, the end result is less _Rebel Without a Cause_ and more ‘ensemble cast member in a high school theater production of _Grease’_. Newt affects an exaggerated swagger in the hopes of making up for it anyway.

“I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle before,” Gottlieb confesses, clacking in time with Newt down the hallway.

“Me neither,” Newt says.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He located a motorcycle without issue, to his surprise. It was just sort of sitting outside. There’s no sidecar, so Gottlieb will just have to get _nice_ and _up close_ and personal with him on the back. To Newt’s further surprise, he finds he can handle the motorcycle without issue, too. It’s like the math thing all over again. Faking it ‘til he makes it. It’s nice to have Gottlieb clinging to him the way he is, too, gasping and gripping tighter every time they go over the smallest bump. Even if he is a little pointy. And if his cane keeps jabbing Newt in the thigh.

Newt’s not really sure what he expected, but there seems to be exactly one main road that intersects the science facility, with exactly two points: to the left, the airbase, and to the right, the town. Beyond that is mountains and a moonless night sky as far as the eye can see. It makes sense, sort of, considering the fact no scenes in the movie take place anywhere else, except for the beach some miles away. It makes navigating a hell of a lot easier.

Gottlieb staggers off the bike when Newt parks it outside of the diner, his hair—somehow—pristine and untouched by the wind. A flash of Newt’s reflection in the bike’s hubcap shows him he’s in a similar state. Cool. “I heard this is where all the hip kids come for dates,” he tells Gottlieb with a grin, pushing open the front door.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” Gottlieb tells him politely. He glances around the diner, from the jukebox in the corner blasting doo-wop, to the checkered floor, to the neatly polished countertops. It’s very…Americana. Or just, like, half of the movies that came out of the 80s. “Oh, this is a nice place, isn’t it?”

“Back booth,” Newt says. “C’mon.”

He drags Gottlieb over by his shirtcuff and deposits him into a dark grey booth in the very back of the diner, and takes the one on the opposite side of the table. It’s isolated enough they’ll be able to talk in peace, and Newt may even get the chance to make a move. Gottlieb peruses a menu with mild interest. “Perhaps _too_ nice,” he says, eyebrows arching up. “Fifty cents for a hamburger. Hm.”

Newt, meanwhile, peruses Gottlieb with much more than mild interest. Gottlieb has a jaw and set of cheekbones that could cut glass; those long eyelashes that frame soft, sad, dark eyes; a strange gash of a mouth that he continuously worries at with his teeth. The overall effect is more than appealing. “We should split a milkshake,” Newt says.

“I don’t like sweets very much,” Gottlieb says.

“I’ll order one anyway, just in case,” Newt says.

They order. Newt gets them that milkshake. Gottlieb unfolds a napkin and tucks it delicately into his shirt collar in preparation, and finally shucks off his lab coat to reveal an endearingly dorky sweater vest beneath. And a _pocket protector_. Good God. If Newt wasn’t in wholly in love before, he’d be now. “I do have a few questions for you, Dr. Geiszler, if you wouldn’t mind,” Gottlieb says. “Though not entirely about our research.” ( _Our_ , Newt thinks.) “They’re rather…personal questions.”

Oh, interesting. “Go ahead,” Newt says.

Gottlieb worries at his lip. “I wonder,” he says, “if you think I went about things correctly? If I should've worked harder? I wish I could be proud of our victory, but I can't help but regret we never managed to discover what this creature _was,_ or what it wanted, or why it even did what it did.”

“You worked plenty, dude,” Newt says, flippantly. “I wouldn’t worry about the rest. It’s over and done with, right?” Privately, though, he always thought it was a total cop-out _It Came From the Pacific Ocean_ never gave its monster any lore beyond the hand-waving _it’s not of this world!_ Be a little creative, man, come on.

“Yes, I did,” Gottlieb sighs. “I believe that was my problem. _Is._ Often I feel all I do is work—often I feel I’m not meant to have any purpose beyond that. And yet the answers I sought remained perpetually out of my grasp. I wished to understand the beast, Dr. Geiszler, to not merely have destroyed it, and now I feel I've lost my chance. Do you understand?”

Newt understands more than he would like to let on. Not just because Gottlieb described how he feels every day of his life—in his lonely, boring life, where he works, and works, and works, and sometimes sleeps, and sometimes eats, and once a blue moon goes on a date that fails miserably—but because he knows for a fact Gottlieb was _written_ into that being his sole purpose. For the first time, Newt finally begins to feel something akin to pity for the odd, stuffy scientist. “I think I do,” he says. “But, hey, you do other stuff, don’t you?”

Gottlieb shakes his head.

“You don’t spend all your time cooped up in the lab,” Newt says. “You have a family, don’t you? Friends?”

“I have not left the facility property in over a decade,” Gottlieb says, and then he frowns. “Or—perhaps longer. It’s very funny. I have siblings, I suppose, and I must’ve made friends at university, but I can’t seem to recall details of any of it. Only that it happened.”

The little bubble of pity in Newt’s chest grows. He reaches out across the table and covers Gottlieb’s hand. “Well,” he says. “I’m your friend. And we left the lab, didn’t we?”

“Oh,” Gottlieb says, surprise flashing across his face (and, Newt is pleased to see, a little pink flush creeping up too). “I suppose we did.”

“See,” Newt says. “You’re allowed to take some alone time, dude. The creature's dead. You can relax for once. Shit—shoot—" (PG rating, he reminds himself) “—you _deserve_ to relax for once.”

“Perhaps,” Gottlieb says, with a low, skeptical hum.

Their food arrives, and the jukebox switches to something slower. Gottlieb eyes Newt curiously as Newt taps ketchup out onto his cheeseburger. (The waitress, apparently, had never heard of a veggie burger before, but Newt concedes dimension-hopping is as good an excuse as any to break his vegetarianism.) “I must admit,” Gottlieb says, “I don’t recall much of _you_ , either. How can that be? We’ve worked together for years. I’m certain of it.”

“Uh, yeah,” Newt says.

He picks a few seeds off of his hamburger bun. _Put your head on my shoulder_ , Paul Anka begs from the jukebox. Across the diner, a young couple are swaying in each other’s arms, the boy’s letterman jacket slung over the girl’s shoulders. Newt flicks one of the seeds in their direction.

“Dr. Gottlieb,” he says. “Do you believe in alternate realities?”

Gottlieb sets down his conservative glass of ice water. “Do I what?”

“Hypothetically,” Newt says, “hypothetically, let’s say that I’m not from here. Let’s say that I’m from sixty years into the future somewhere where you don’t exist. Let’s say I woke up here yesterday and I have no fucking—” Gottlieb flinches. “—uh, darn clue how, or why, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to get home, or if I’m even supposed to _go_ home. What would you do?”

Gottlieb is silent for a long time. “What an absurd man you are, Dr. Geiszler,” he finally says. “You’re suggesting a scenario—”

“A hypothetical one,” Newt says.

“—a hypothetical scenario wherein you’ve suddenly gained the ability to travel between realities, though perhaps unwillingly,” Gottlieb says, “and you would be thrust _here_ of all places?” He sniffs. “I would discover the why, naturally.”

Newt drums his fingers against his Coke bottle. “Naturally,” he says.

* * *

The next day sees a markedly more pleasant shift in Gottlieb’s demeanor towards him, though—Newt will admit—he didn’t exactly provide a very good jumping off point on that first day. Gottlieb asks him to hand him chalk, to order their ( _their_ ) underlings around, to check his equations for errors, to finish them when he’s stumped or needs a rest. They finish their work in half the amount of time it would’ve taken Gottlieb alone (though this is most likely due to the fact that Newt’s been scrawling out utter bullshit all day and nodding at all the appropriate times), and, in _very_ high spirits, Gottlieb sends everyone home early.

Everyone except for Newt.

“I had a grand time last night,” Gottlieb confesses once it’s just the two of them. He’s fiddling the head of his cane between his hands and looking at his dorky saddle shoes like he expects them to hold the answer to the universe. Newt, in the middle of refilling a lab mouse’s food bowl, stares at him. “I can hardly remember the last time I—well.”

“Had a life,” Newt finishes, helpfully.

Gottlieb makes a face. “Hm,” he says. “It sounds rather pathetic when you put it like that.”

Newt finishes tipping in the little food pellets and shuts the cage door. The mouse squeaks happily at him. “So, what’s the deal?” he says. Gottlieb has resumed gazing at his shoes. “You wanna go out again tonight? Same place?”

“If it’s not too much of an inconvenience for you,” Gottlieb says in a rush.

“Nah,” Newt says, and shakes his head with a smile. “Not at all, Dr. Gottlieb.”

“Hermann,” Gottlieb corrects. He clears his throat. “That is to say—you may call me Hermann, if you wish.”

Newt does.

* * *

They fall into a comfortable pattern over the next week. Newt begins to accept that this is just his existence now, apparently. In the mornings, Newt and Hermann work side-by-side in the laboratory, postulating theories, pointing out calculation errors, and bickering good-naturedly; Hermann catches wind of some nutso locals claiming they saw _UFOs_ flying overhead, and the subject tides them over for _several_ good debates. At night, they get dinner, and talk, and sometimes take walks, and stay out long after the rest of the facility has fallen asleep. Hermann likes to hear—highly edited—stories recounting Newt’s adventures back in his, uh, _hometown_ , and he takes to calling Newt _Newton_ like a charm. Newt, meanwhile, likes to hear Hermann say anything.

(“A mobile phone,” Hermann says. “A phone you’re meant to keep in your pocket? How very strange. Your scientists must be very advanced.”, or “On the _moon_?”, or—)

“What very peculiar trousers you’re wearing,” Hermann says one afternoon. “I wasn’t aware they made them that tight.”

This was the afternoon of the morning that Newt woke up in his bunk only to discover that his closet of heavy denim transformed into his standard skinny jeans overnight. This sort of stuff was happening a lot lately, in fact: in addition to the skinny jeans, Newt’s hair was beginning to lose its perpetual pomade slick-back, and two techs had a small (non-lethal) accident in the lab the day before, notable for the fact that it was their _very first_ , and the menus down at the diner were suddenly advertising vegetarian options. It probably means something important. Unfortunately, Newt’s traitorous brain picks up on only one detail in Hermann’s observation and latches onto it greedily, which is that Hermann noticed his pants are tight. Hermann’s been looking.

Newt smooths his hand over one thigh. He’s pleased to see Hermann’s eyes track the movement. “Custom-made,” he says, and leers. “Do you like them?”

If Hermann blushes, Newt wouldn’t be able to tell, but he could almost swear the tips of the scientist’s ears go a bit darker as he mutters and turns away.

That night in the lab is the night Newt finally decides to act on his attraction. Well—not _exactly_. He decides to almost act on his attraction. Imply heavily to Hermann he _has_ attraction in a way that even a stuffy old grump like Hermann would be able to pick up on. He smooths out his hair, pops open the top button of his clean shirt, and waits until it’s just the two of them left before he sidles up to Hermann with a broad smile.

“So,” he says, “what’s up, Dr. Gottlieb?”

“Newton,” Hermann says politely. He’s rearranging the order of the beakers on one of the work benches. Newt’s always wondered what’s supposed to be in them, and what, exactly, they’re there _for_. “Is there something I might help you with?”

Newt stills him with a hand to his wrist. Hermann looks up. “I was wondering if you knew of any _cool_ spots the, uh, kids go to be alone,” Newt says. “If you catch what I mean.”

Newt already knows the cool spots the kids go to be alone: after the monster terrorizes the diner in its first rampage, it moves on to the Lover’s Lane, where it proceeds to upend a few hapless teenagers’ cars. (Don’t have sex, kids. Just say no.) It’s a pretty secluded spot, lots of trees, lots of places where (hypothetically) Newt could park a fancy convertible (if he manages to get his hands on one) and get his hands under Hermann’s metaphorical letterman jacket without fear of interruption. He’s not sure what reaction he expected from Hermann—another blush at the tips of his ears, stammering, perhaps even the briefest hint of _scandalization_ flickering across that sharp face. But Hermann’s eyebrows merely knit together in confusion. “I really don’t think I’m the one you ought to be asking about that, Dr. Geiszler,” he says. “I’m afraid my exposure to youth culture is _quite_ limited.”

Okay. Change of tactics, maybe. “I think I overheard someone mention some place in the hills at the diner the other night?” Newt tries again.

This time, Newt gets the reaction he wanted. Hermann blinks in surprise behind those big glasses; a beaker nearly slips from his fingers; he coughs. “Why do you want to go _there_?”

“I thought you and I could go,” Newt says, “and. Y’know. Put our heads together. Discuss _research_. Alone. In private. Just the two of us.” He points at himself, then points at Hermann, then waves his finger between them. “Did I mention we’d be alone?”

Hermann begins to worry at his lower lip; he turns to worry his lower lip at one of his great big chalkboards instead. Then he pulls a series of impressive frowns. “Oh, I really don’t know, Newton. I was planning on working the night through—”

“Dude,” Newt says.

Hermann winces.

“What’d I tell you?” Newt says. “You deserve to have a little fun every now and then. Besides, the monster’s _dead_. It’s, like, in a million little pieces. It’s not coming back.” They have plenty of time for a little nerd-on-nerd necking.

“But those _reports_ , Newton,” Hermann says. “The silver spacecrafts overhead.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Newt says again.

“One moment,” Hermann says.

He steps over to his chalkboard and begins to scrawl a few lines of an equation. “ _No_ , look,” Newt says, butting in and taking the chalk from him.

They go back and forth like this a few times, Hermann muttering under his breath, Newt crossing out bits right after Hermann’s written it and adding in his own slightly more _dubious_ conclusions that spell out a UFO-free night for them. Finally Hermann takes a step back. “ _Well_ ,” he says again, leaning on his cane as he sweeps his eyes over the board, “I suppose you have a point.”

Then, to Newt’s (and, frankly, what appears to be _Hermann’s own_ ) bewilderment, he stares down at his hand. “By Jove,” he says. “What is…?”

He holds up his chalk. It could just be a trick of the light, but Newt _swears_ it’s yellow, as is the dust across Hermann’s fingertips. “That’s quite strange, isn’t it?” Hermann says.

Newt feels a small pang of alarm. Skinny jeans, veggie burgers, lab accidents, and now yellow chalk. The 21st century—or at least, _reality_ —seems to be catching up to him. Newt has actually considered Hermann’s advice to figure out the _why_ of his extended vacation here, but other his saving Hermann from a particularly nasty death, he hasn’t managed to come up with anything. And with the movie’s timeline ending in two days… He’s just not ready to leave Hermann, is all. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “Anyway, can we go?”

Hermann nods and sets down his yellow chalk, and they leave the lab together; though, all the while, Newt can’t help but wonder if the 21st century _is_ catching up with him, why it is the dust on his fingers remains a steadfast white.

“Nice night, isn’t it?” Newt says.

“Mm,” Hermann says.

The roof of the convertible—which was borrowed off a hapless young Jim, who seemed thrilled to be helping out the, uh, _great scientific minds_ in any way he could—is flipped down to allow for maximum privacy; the windows rolled down for a breeze; the radio tuned to an appropriately romantic station; Newt’s hand migrating, slowly, from the steering wheel to the general vicinity of Hermann’s left knee; Hermann’s attention, unfortunately, focused fully on the clear horizon. That’s the interesting thing about 1957, really—less light pollution. More stars. Not that’s it’s too easy to see them in a black-and-white filter anyway. “Nice and cool,” Newt says.

“Yes,” Hermann agrees. His eyes flick up from the horizon to the moon, which hangs high above the treetops to their right. “I’m really quite chuffed you’ve invited me up here. It’s very peaceful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Newt agrees.

Hermann turns to him and smiles warmly. “You know, I’ve very much enjoyed getting to know you, Newton,” he says. “You’ve been a great friend to me.”

“I kinda feel like we’re maybe even _more_ than friends,” Newt says. His hand continues its ambitious journey, though he reconsiders its destination. Maybe not Hermann’s knee—maybe Hermann’s hair, short and unstylish, to brush his bangs back around his deceptively broad shoulders—maybe to cup Hermann’s clean-shaven cheek—his sharp jaw—maybe, maybe— “Hermann,” he continues, eyes fixed on Hermann’s wide gash of lips, and he wets his own, “have you ever kissed anyone before?”

But Hermann startles violently, more violently than Newt thinks a question like that deserves; for a moment, he’s worried he’s offended Hermann, but then Hermann points out the driver’s side window. “I say, did you see _that_?”

“Nope,” Newt says. “Anyway, like I was asking—”

“It was one of those bloody saucers, I’m _sure_ of it.”

Oh, God—more fucking UFO hysteria. And from the previously indomitable Dr. Gottlieb. _Wrong kind of movie, dude_ , he wants to say, but instead he just sighs and slumps back against the seat. No hot nerd-on-nerd tonight, it seems. “I can _promise_ you,” he says, “whatever those weirdos said they’ve been seeing these past few days, they are absolutely, one-hundred-percent not—"

There’s a blinding flash, like the sky is suddenly lit up with a thousand blazing white flames; a low metallic hum overhead; a rush of wind so great the trees almost bend in half with it. It’s over in an instant.

Newt and Hermann look at each other.

“Where did it land?” Newt says, and starts up the engine.

They peal out of the Lane as fast as Jim’s car will take them. It turns out to be a mostly fruitless endeavor: though the UFO—flying saucer— _whatever_ it was left behind a thin trail of smoke, it dissipates in minutes, taking with it the only hint of where the saucer could’ve possibly been headed. “It was over the valley,” Hermann insists, but when they finally make it across town to the rocky dip, it’s close to midnight, and _way_ too dark to see a goddamned thing. Newt would break his neck trying to hike it now. Even with a flashlight.

Besides— “I just don’t see anything,” Newt finally admits, after ten minutes of craning his neck out the popped hood and squinting into the dark. Not a single weird light, not a single flash in of silver in the headlights, and _especially_ not any little green men. “Whatever it was, if it landed here, it’s gone now.”

He drops back into his seat with an _oof_. Hermann is wringing his hands in his lap. “Perhaps there are more of the monster’s kind,” he says, “and perhaps—perhaps they’re seeking revenge, for…?”

Newt covers one of those wringing hands with his own. Hermann startles at the touch, but—with a strangely wide-eyed glance at Newt—quickly relaxes. “Tell you what, dude,” Newt says, and hopes to God Hermann can’t see how nervous he is, “I’ll come out here tomorrow and check it out myself. In _daylight_. Is that okay?”

Hermann hesitates, but nods. “Yes,” he says, “yes, that’s fine.”

Their road back to the facility is subdued, but Hermann surprises Newt with a hug when Newt drops him off at his quarters. He leaves a smear of yellow chalk dust on Newt’s jacket.

* * *

The most fun part of any research endeavor—in Newt’s humble opinion—is the hands-on stuff. He’ll leave the boring theoretical shit behind any day, thank you very much. Nothing compares to poking around in the guts of a giant plant, or deep-sea diving for specimens, or even just picking up a cool-looking frog and hoping it doesn’t spit venom at him. Newt likes stimulation. Newt likes getting _messy_. It’s why he takes to the task of heading out to investigate the valley the next day with a spring in his step.

It’s sunny as hell out, and he regrets not borrowing the convertible (the sweet, air-conditioned convertible) again almost the instant he tears out on the motorcycle. It’s hot— _really_ hot—and no amount of rolled-up sleeves or opened collars seems to be helping. God damn it, didn’t anyone in this movie wear _shorts_? Un-fucking believable.

It all makes for a pretty long, miserable ride. He’s almost relieved when he gets to the valley and can find _some_ sort of shade under a few scraggly trees, though his proximity to the potential crash site means the risk of being stomped by a large alien has grown exponentially larger. He’ll take his chances if it means giving Hermann some peace of mind. How disgustingly selfless of him.

He’s expecting to be searching for hours once he reaches the center of the valley, maybe even the rest of the afternoon. It turns out to not even take him twenty minutes.

It’s not a crater, like he was expecting, nor is there the smoldering wreckage of a space craft. Indentations, four of them spaced perfectly apart in the stone below, large enough and _deep_ enough to have cracked it. Like the sort of landing gear you’d see a UFO leave behind in a corny sci-fi movie—like the corny sci-fi movie Newt’s in. Blacked and cracked rock in the dead center. More alarming, though, are the footprints leading from it likewise cracked into the stone: six sets, or maybe it’s _three_ , maybe they’re four-legged, like the imprints of pegs. Or spider legs. (With a shiver, Newt remembers another of his favorite childhood b-movies, _Tarantula._ ) Not headed anywhere—just around the valley, as if they’d been investigating.

Judging from the size of the landing gear and footprints, the creatures must be massive.

“Well, fuck,” Newt says.

He tears back to the laboratory as a rainstorm begins to brew overhead, practicing what the hell kind of speech he’ll even need to make to Hermann over and over in his head. Hey, dude, turns out they _were_ UFOs, and turns out you were right about there being more, and turns out they’re maybe sort of the size of the monster we wasted our last resources on blowing up, and maybe I have no idea where they are now, and maybe we’re toast? He’s almost relieved to find Hermann already inside, slouching uncomfortably in the middle of the room (and, most importantly, _unharmed_ , because some very small part of Newt’s brain had become convinced that the aliens were rampaging closer and closer to the facility with every minute). He looks distressed. Good—this kind of information is easier to dispense to someone who’s already having a bad day. “Hermann!” Newt says, and grabs his arm urgently. “Look, dude, I don’t have time to explain, but we’ve gotta—"

Hermann grabs his arm, too. “Newton,” he says. “I’ve been _thinking_.”

“We can talk later,” Newt says, “seriously, we gotta—”’

“ _No_ ,” Hermann says.

Newt shuts up. The sooner Hermann gets it out of his system—the sooner he tells Newt above discovering the, like, joys of sleeping, or of booking vacation plans—the sooner they can get to work on stopping Alien Invasion Electric Boogaloo.

“I thought of what you said the other night,” Hermann says, “about doing what I want. About _deserving_ to do what I want. And—you _have_ been a good friend. More than a good friend. Newton—” He wets his lips nervously; his eyes are wide, frantic, almost _fearful._ “Newton, I want _you_.”

Several things happen at once. Hermann’s cane clatters to the ground; Hermann grips Newt by the front of his labcoat; Hermann’s lips find Newt’s; the world seems to shatter and crash and _explode_ around them, in _color_ , and it takes Newt a moment to realize that it’s not the world that’s exploding and crashing into color, but the beakers and flasks lining the laboratory walls—now green, and pink, and red, and blue, so vibrant they sting Newt’s eyes, churning and bubbling and spilling over the sides. And still Hermann kisses him.

He’s shaking when he pulls away from Newt. His eyes are brown. Not just dark— _brown_. His hair is, too. “Holy shit, Hermann,” Newt gasps. “You’re—”

Hermann looks down at himself—his _technicolor_ self—and sways unsteadily in place. “By _Jove_ , what—?”

Newt steps forward to catch him. “Easy, easy, I’ve got you—”

Hermann touches Newt’s arms, his face, his hair, swaying forward to put the bulk of his weight on Newt. Newt can’t tell if the shaking is from fear or relief. “You make me feel so very strange,” Hermann says, wandering hand finally setting on Newt’s cheek. He caresses it gently, almost anxiously, the touch clearly foreign to him. “I don’t quite know what to _make_ of it.”

“You don’t have to,” Newt says, and he kisses Hermann as chastely as Hermann kissed him.

They move to the floor, though really it’s more like falling: Hermann, limp, but desperate, and Newt—having waited for this moment since he was thirteen years old, if he’s being real—pliable as anything. “Don’t stop,” Hermann says into his mouth, “ _oh_ , please, Newton—”

He grabs a fistful of Newt’s hair and tugs him closer: above them, another beaker shatters into purple, and above Newt, pink blush blooms across Hermann’s cheeks. Newt tracks it down his neck with kisses. “I won’t,” he promises in a whisper against the jut of Hermann’s collarbone. As fucking _if_ he would.

Afterwards—a long time afterwards—they lay side-by-side on the laboratory floor, labcoats spread beneath their bodies as a makeshift blanket, neither of them speaking. Beakers and bottles lay in oozing, multicolored shards around them. Their clothing lays around them, too. Newt can’t stop staring at Hermann. Hermann can’t stop staring at his hands—his slender, pale, but _color_ , hands.

“You’re,” Newt begins, “I mean—you…”

He swallows. It hasn’t escaped his notice that, despite their tryst, his own body remains perfectly monochromatic. Not a hint of color in the tendrils of ink up his arms. He can’t help but be a little disappointed. “How very strange,” Hermann says, and waggles his fingers. “I imagine I look very foolish.”

“You don’t,” Newt says, and it’s the truth. Hermann was already a hottie, but now that Newt gets to witness the full brunt of those doe eyes, those inky black eyelashes, the blush dusting those sharp cheekbones, he’s practically head over fucking heels.

Hermann lowers his hand and smiles. “No?”

“Not at all,” Newt says.

Hermann pulls Newt in for another kiss. For all they just got up to, Hermann’s kisses never progressed beyond the chaste press of lips-on-lips, and even now he kisses Newt like they’re two kids at a grade school mixer. Awkward and fumbling as can be. Newt wonders what would’ve happened if he tried to work in some tongue—the whole building would’ve exploded, probably. “I’ve never done a thing like that before,” Hermann confesses. “Not _once_.”

Obviously, Newt thinks. (“What is _that_?” Hermann gasped, staring down at the front of his pants, and Newt winked and grinned and said “Don’t worry, dude, I know how to handle it,” and then Hermann— “By _Jove_!”) Hermann’s back to looking at his hand. “Do you suppose that’s why…?”

“Maybe,” Newt agrees. He props himself up on his elbow, suddenly remembering the reason he came down here in the first place. He thinks his forgetfulness can be at least _somewhat_ excused. “Listen, Hermann. I went back to the valley like I said I would. There was—"

But Hermann is giving him the same sweet, sappy smile as before (and, fuck, his smiles are twice as blinding now) and he reaches out to stroke back Newt’s hair. Carefree as anything. Newt’s never seen him looking this way before.

The words die on his tongue.

“There wasn’t, uh, anything,” he finally says. “Nothing. I think it must’ve been some freak lightning storm that went overhead last night. Guess everyone else was just seeing things.”

The half-assed explanation, bizarrely, seems to satisfy Hermann. He nods with an “Mm,” and drags Newt’s hand to his mouth to press a kiss to his knuckles. “That’s certainly a relief,” he murmurs. “We’ve quite earned a break.”

“Yeah,” Newt says, swallowing around a sudden lump in his throat, and ignoring the heavy layer of guilt settling itself across his chest. He pulls his hand away from Hermann gently. “Look, dude, I think there’s something else we need to talk about.”

The truth had to come out at some point, at least. Especially now that Hermann is running around in _technicolor_. (Especially after what Newt saw in the valley.) Newt waits until Hermann redresses and situates himself comfortably in a desk chair to start. “At the diner that first night,” he says, “I asked you about alternate realities. About, hypothetically, falling from one world into another, with no clue how, or why. Right?”

Hermann, giving off the vague impression of a schoolboy, nods. His hands are folded politely in his lap over his cane. Goddamn, he’s cute.

“Okay,” Newt says. “Hypothetically, what if I wasn’t being…hypothetical?”

Hermann doesn’t nod this time: his eyebrows jump. “You mean to say—”

“I fell through a wormhole or _something_ from a reality where you’re a fictional character in a movie and I’ve kinda-accidentally been changing the plot this whole time?” Newt says.

Hermann’s expression darkens, and he pushes himself to his feet with a particularly icy flourish. “I don’t appreciate being mocked, Dr. Geiszler,” he snaps. “I thought a man with whom I’ve shared _intimate_ company would—"

“Not mocking!” Newt says. “No, no, not at all! No, listen to me. Seriously.” He hurries forward and nudges Hermann back down into his chair; he doesn’t let go of Hermann’s shoulders, which are tight with tension. “Just _look_ at yourself, Hermann. Look _around_ you. None of this was happening before I got here two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks ago,” Hermann echoes, and then says, “But that can’t be right. We’ve worked together for _years_. I remember. We—”

“Like you remember your family? Or school?”

Hermann opens and shuts his mouth several times. He doesn’t make a sound.

“Look, dude,” Newt says, “this isn’t how I wanted to tell you. Shit—I didn’t want to tell you at _all_. I thought I’d pop in for a bit, ride out the end of the movie, and try to figure out how to get home eventually.” And, you know, maybe talk Hermann into joining him in the wondrous world of the non-fictional twenty-first century, where things happen in a distinctly less sci-fi fashion. Well. Most of the time. Newt being the exception, obviously.

“Then why are you?” Hermann says.

_Because shit’s getting weird_. “Because I’m kinda in love with you, dude,” he admits.

It’s half of the truth. It appeases Hermann, anyway, makes another pink blush bloom over his sharp cheeks, makes him turn his _brown_ eyes to the floor. “I see,” he says. His tone is perfectly neutral, but Newt can see the corners of his mouth threatening to twitch up. “And you’d like me to go back home with you, is that it?”

On Newt’s rainy ride back to the lab, between his agonizing over how to tell Hermann the truth, he made sure to devote some time to agonizing over how to solve this particular fuck-up as well. Because, boy, was this a fuck-up. Ultimately he came to two solutions: one, they could use their remaining resources against their new potential enemies, this time without Newt’s metatextual foresight, and possibly (probably) die, or two, they could get the hell out of dodge. Fight or flight. Newt’s no coward, for the record, but he’s also not a fucking idiot, so he made his decision easily.

It comes even more easily now that he cut out half of the whole _telling Hermann the truth_ thing. It’s a fictional world—it’s not like anyone is _actually_ getting hurt. What Hermann doesn’t know won’t kill him. “Not like we have anything left to do here,” Newt says, and forces a grin.

The corners of Hermann’s mouth lose their battle, and he matches the grin far more genuinely. “I certainly can’t refuse an offer like that,” he says. “Provided you’re not merely _bonkers,_ that is. How do you plan on getting home?”

For this, Newt does, in fact, have a plan. Or at least a semblance of one. “There was a storm the night I came here,” he says. “There was all this crazy lightning, and the power went out, and the project I was working on lit up, and then next thing I knew—” He snaps his fingers.

“Project?” Hermann says.

“It was just some some old wires and radio parts,” Newt says. Company-owned wires and radio parts, if he’s being technical. “Nothing that exciting. Except, you know, it apparently was.”

Hermann’s hands, back to being neatly folded in his lap, shift. He drums his fingers on his knee. “What you’re suggesting,” he says, “er—within the realm of hypotheticals, of course—is that if you build it again, it might…?”

At the end of the movie, which should’ve technically been tomorrow, there’s a massive storm. The rain blinds the monster during the _climactic_ final battle, allowing the military guys to drive it back into a telephone wire at the exact moment lightning strikes, frying it to bits. Happy ending. Newt isn’t about to go _Back to the Future_ on this or anything—he’s not going to strap a lightning rod to his motorcycle and cross his fingers—but if he could just recreate the general conditions of the other night with his jumble of radio wires, he’s sure _something_ will happen. “I think my odds are about fifty-fifty,” he says.

“You’re being far too generous,” Hermann says. “I believe they’re more along the lines of one in a million.” His eyebrows crease in thought. “Though perhaps if we _perfect_ your design—”

“ _No_ ,” Newt says quickly. Hermann blinks at him. “That’s—that’ll take _way_ too long. And. Uh. A storm’s going to hit tomorrow, and after that, it could be _weeks_ , or—”

“I understand, Newton,” Hermann interrupts, giving Newt another smile, and Newt’s heartrate settles back down to something normal. “We ought to get started right away.”

Hermann’s lab—they discover, to Newt’s disappointment—doesn’t have much in the way of random scrap to fiddle with, so Hermann marches down to the observation division (left bored and twiddling their thumbs, apparently, without a monster to defeat) and returns with a box of dusty radios tucked under one arm. “If you could have _seen_ their faces when I walked in,” he exclaims with no small amount of delight. “They went positively green. Er—metaphorically so. They kept asking me if I was feeling ill.”

Newt snorts as he takes the box. “What’d you say?”

“I told them I was feeling _perfectly_ well, thank you,” Hermann says, and then he grips Newt’s chin to angle him in for a brief, chaste kiss. One of the first things Newt’s going to do when they get back to the real world is teach the guy how to use tongue. Mark his words. “Have you got everything you need?”

“Think so,” Newt says. He hefts the box over to Hermann’s neat and tidy desk and dumps its contents out across it. Good—Hermann had the foresight to snag a couple screwdrivers and a handful of fasteners too. Newt’s project back home was a work in progress from _several_ months, but with the two of them working together, and with Newt sort of knowing the end goal to achieve…

The work for the better part of the day in complete isolation. Occasionally, the odd lab aide drops in to see if Dr.s Gottlieb and Geiszler need any assistance, though Hermann (after being gawked at) sends them away each time; once, while Hermann is down the hallway fetching electrical tape, one stumbles in and announces there’s been another UFO sighting in town, this one _confirmed_. “I’ll be sure to tell Dr. Gottlieb,” Newt assures him, lying through his teeth and scooting him along quickly.

Hermann talks plenty—about how brilliant Newt must’ve been to create such a device as this in the first place, how _excited_ he is to learn about all the technological advancements in Newt’s world, how he can’t wait to engage in more _intimate encounters_ with Newt—but, unlike their previous chats, Newt doesn’t talk at all. It’s stress, he thinks. The threat of being trapped here forever looming over him. Of whatever those creatures in the valley were.

Guilt.

(Hermann wouldn’t want to leave if he knew there was still work to be done, a small voice nags in the back of Newt’s head. _You_ shouldn’t want to leave when there’s still work to be done.)

(They’re fictional characters, Newt reminds it. _Fictional_.)

They finish close to midnight. It doesn’t look exactly identical to Newt’s machine back home—too retro—but it’s close. Hermann sags back in his chair with a loud yawn and tosses down his screwdriver. “I suppose there’s only one way to find out if it works,” he says. “Shall we reconvene in five hours?”

Five hours—that gives the big storm enough time to roll in, but—hopefully—not the creatures enough time to launch a full-scale attack. Besides. Newt’s fucking exhausted, and he would like a nap. He tosses down his screwdriver, too. “Let’s just go back to my room together,” he says.

Newt would like to say he got to second base or something again, or even made an honorable dive for first, but that would be a goddamned lie, because the instant they strip out of their labcoats they’re collapsing on the bed in a deep sleep. Newt barely remembers to set the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside for five.

It turns out they don’t need one. Newt is woken by the knocking first, most likely due in no small part that he slept fitfully; Hermann, dorky glasses still perched on the bridge of his nose, tucked in under Newt’s arm, and snoring away pleasantly, doesn’t so much as crack an eyelid. It’s pretty impressive, to be honest. The knocking’s pretty loud. Newt crams his glasses back on and squints at the door.

“Yeah?” he groans.

“We have an _emergency_ , Dr. Geiszler!” a voice Newt recognizes as one of the lab aides shouts.

“Mmhmm,” Newt says. “Be there soon.”

He shuts his eyes and snuggles back in against Hermann, who finally begins to stir. He blinks at Newt. “What on earth is all that racket?” His voice is rough with sleep, and his hair is sticking up in several different angles. It’s adorable as hell.

“Nothing,” Newt starts to say, but he’s interrupted by three loud, echoing knocks, each one more obnoxious than the last.

“But they’re evacuating the facility!”

Hermann sits straight up.

Well, fuck.

Hermann is out the door and clacking furiously down the hallway to the laboratory in seconds, and Newt trails closely behind him, though with decidedly less excited fervor. In fact, Newt might even say it’s with a deep, sinking feeling of _dread_. “ _Evacuating_ ,” Hermann says. There’s a red—and the oddity of the color on Hermann doesn’t escape Newt’s notice—line pressed across his cheek, most likely an indentation left from Newt’s shirt. “Whatever for? Have we not actually killed the beast after all?”

“The radar team picked up something big headed our way, sir,” the aide says, not quite matching Hermann’s pace, and also side-eyeing Hermann _plenty_. Whether it’s because of the mildly compromising position he found them in or Hermann’s appearance is unclear. “And with all those spacecrafts flying overhead—”

Hermann frowns. _Fuck_ , Newt thinks again. “No, you see, Dr. Geiszler investigated those,” he says. “They’re nothing but—”

The aid shoves a stack of papers at Hermann; Hermann doesn’t slow once as he pores over them, his face darkening with each page. “What is it?” Newt asks anxiously, poking his head over Hermann’s shoulder to catch a glimpse. It just looks like a load of nonsense to him—scribbled lines, and random numbers. More movie math.

“It’s a read-out from our radar,” the aide says.

“A read-out which makes it quite _bloody_ clear we’re under attack,” Hermann says.

“What?” Newt squeaks.

He grabs the stack of papers from Hermann and begins to rifle through them himself as Hermann begins an endless barrage of questions at the aide. The first few pages—the radar read-outs—remain nonsensical to him (if Newt survives this, he’s getting PhD number seven in _radiology_ ), but the second half of the data is in blessed English. And boy, does it sound a little too familiar for comfort. “They just _appeared_?” he says. “From thin air?”

The aide nods. “It seems that way.”

Newt notes the time the radar picked them up—fifteen minutes ago, at 4:36—just as the lights flicker overhead with what Newt knows to be the storm. Oh—the storm. “What time did the rain start?” he says.

Hermann turns to him sharply, then pulls the paper stack away to flick through himself. He stops on a page of weather data. “Hardly five minutes before,” he says. “Newton—you don’t think this may have something to do with…?”

How can it, when those creatures have been here even before Newt started to put two-and-two together? And yet it was from _thin air_ …just like Newt…and with Newt’s jumble of wires sitting in the lab, and the storm just like Newt’s… It can’t just be a _coincidence_. “You head out with the others,” Hermann tells the aide, who nods, eyes wide. “Dr. Geiszler and I shall handle this.”

The radio-universe skewing- _whatever_ is sitting innocuously on the floor where they left it when Newt and Hermann enter the lab. It’s buzzing and sparking like a live wire far less innocuously. “Holy shit,” Newt says.

Someone’s turned on one of the laboratory’s smaller radar machines (as well as evacuated the white lab mice, thankfully), and on it, Newt can see the blinking dots of the creatures getting closer. The lights flicker again; somewhere in the compound, a siren begins to go off. Hermann drops to his knees with a pained grunt. “ _Incredible_ ,” he says, reaching out a hand to hover over the twisting wires. “You were right all along. The storm must have activated it as you said it would, and ripped another tear in reality—"

The pit of dread in Newt’s stomach begins to rise and bleed into the suffocating guilt currently taking residence in his chest. The overall effect is pretty nauseating. “Hermann,” he says.

“—to allow them entry. What is it, Newton?”

Newt kneels down next to him and touches his shoulder. “Let’s go now,” he says, unable to conceal the urgency in his voice. “ _Now_. Grab it, grab _any_ part of it, maybe—”

“And allow them to _ravage_ this world as they please?” Hermann scoffs. “Unthinkable. No, Newton, you see—”

“Hermann, dude, seriously—”

“—I have a _plan_ ,” Hermann says.

The sirens suddenly stutter to a halt. Hermann, smiling in a way Newt doesn’t exactly like, pushes himself to his feet. “That means everyone has been evacuated,” he declares. “ _Perfect_. Now, Newton: had earlier events gone to plan (and I don’t doubt you already know this), I was to detonate a bomb with the intent of destroying the monster. It is still stationed underneath the main part of the compound.”

Hermann’s stupid fucking _bomb_. Of course. “No, Hermann, _listen_ ,” Newt begins, but Hermann pressed on, unbothered.

“All we need do is lure the creatures over there—”

“It doesn’t _work_ , Hermann!” Newt shouts.

Hermann blinks at him. “What?”

“Your bomb,” Newt says. He’s breathing hard—almost hyperventilating. When did that happen? His next words come out in a panicked rush. “It doesn’t work. It kills you. Or, I mean—it was _supposed_ to kill you. You set it off when the monster attacks the facility, but you—you didn’t make it right, or something, because it blows the whole _place_ up. I told you how to stop the monster before that could happen, and I think that’s why—well.” He swallows.

He finally allows himself to entertain the suspicions he’d been too afraid to even consider earlier. It _can’t_ be a coincidence the creatures first emerged in Hermann’s world the same way Newt did; it can’t be a coincidence they did again minutes after Newt’s universe-scrambler would’ve shut itself on; it can’t be a coincidence, even now, they’re focusing the entirety of their assault on the facility. Honing in on Newt and Hermann, almost as if they’re tracking them. Or, perhaps more likely, tracking the machine.

“Why…?” Hermann says. The news of his narrowly avoided death seems to have shocked him. Understandably. Two existential crises in twenty-four hours is a lot for one person to handle.

“I lied about what I found at the valley, Hermann,” Newt says. “I knew.”

A medley of emotions pass over Hermann’s face: disbelief, confusion, betrayal, and finally, _anger_. “You _knew_?” he half-growls. “You _knew_ and you were just going to let me _turn my back_ on—!"

“They’re _fictional_!” Newt shouts. He springs to his feet and grabs Hermann by the lapels of that stupid coat, and shakes him as hard as he dares. “Everyone in this town! It’s all fictional, Hermann. Who gives a shit if some stupid extra in some stupid movie dies? We can get out of here!”

Hermann shoves him away with the head of his cane. “In case you’ve _forgotten_ , Newton,” he says, voice tremoring, but so, so calm, “I’m also _fictional_. What makes my life worth more than theirs?”

“Because,” Newt says. Stammers. “You’re…”

Another alarm begins to sound, this one twice as loud as the last. “There’s been a perimeter breach,” Hermann says, still so calm. Newt turns to watch the blinking dots converge closer to them on the radar screen and takes the brief moment of privacy to swipe his tears away with his palm. “You should get going if you want to make it out of here alive.”

“ _We_ should,” Newt says.

Hermann looks at him, long and hard, something sad blooming behind his eyes; he shakes his head. “No, Newton. Someone is going to have to detonate the bomb.”

If you asked Newt what he thinks one of his most charming traits is, it’d be that he’s _spontaneous_. He likes to live in the moment, the _now_ , to make shit up as he goes along without any semblance of a plan. To follow his every whim. If you asked anyone who’s ever met Newt, they would have a very different name for this particular character trait of his: _impulsive_. They would also disagree on his classification of it being charming.

It takes Newt three seconds to process the full implications of Hermann’s words. It takes one second for him to react.

“You’re right,” he says, and, stealing one last kiss, shoves Hermann backwards.

Hermann’s gone the instant he makes contact with the wires, leaving behind nothing but his cane. Newt’s relieved, if he’s being honest. And not just because Hermann’s out of harm’s way. It would be _super_ embarrassing if the machine was a bust and Hermann just ended up with a bruised elbow from hitting the floor or an electric shock or something, plus, the guilt of leaving behind a problem _he caused_ was kind of eating away at Newt.

Newt finds the detonation switch for the bomb easily, in all its tacky movie glory: a giant button on a box labelled _Do Not Press._ Simple enough. All he has to do is ignore its explicit instructions, and the town will be saved, the portal to Newt’s world incinerated, and whatever nefarious purposes these creatures have for the portal and Newt’s world gone along with it. It, and Newt. He steadies his finger over the button, pleasantly surprised to find color creeping up his tattoos. 

The ceiling shakes with an ear-splitting roar.

“Well,” Newt says to no one. “It’s been fun.” It’s a pretty rock star way to go, if he’s being honest, even pretty _leading man_ of him—love interest safe and sound, town about to be, too, Newt’s life sacrificed _bravely_ for everyone, swapped with Hermann to give Hermann the life he's always known Hermann deserves. Maybe that was the _why_ all along. He presses the button.

A violent explosion rockets across the facility, tearing through skyscraper-high creatures, the parking lot where Newt’s motorcycle sits, the observation room, the _laboratory_ , destroying all of it almost instantly. Newt witnesses none of this, however: in the split second between the bomb’s detonation and Newt’s probable fiery death, someone yanks him backwards, and backwards, and backwards, until everything is dissolving before his very eyes.

He’s standing in his lab.

“That was _incredibly_ stupid of you,” Hermann says.

" _Tune in next week for 'Monster On Campus_ '!" Newt's TV says happily.

The cognitive dissonance of being wholly prepared for one’s death and then _not actually_ dying compounded upon everything being bright and colorful once more proves to be a little too much for Newt, and he staggers back against his workbench, groaning and rubbing his eyes. He feels like he just got hit by a bus. “And romantic, I hope,” he says. He squints at Hermann. “How’d you get the thingy to work again?”

“I touched it on your end,” Hermann says. “And luckily I _did_. A second later...”

The lab looks the exact same as when Newt left it, dark and deserted, with the storm raging outside, like only a few minutes have passed instead of the days and days it’s actually been. In fact—a quick check of Newt’s cell phone confirms (God, Newt missed having a cell phone)—it _has_ only been a few minutes. Five minutes exactly. Newt would be tempted to say it was all a dream if Hermann wasn’t twiddling his thumbs two feet away, and if the pile of radio wires on his desk weren’t scorched and half-disintegrated. “Far out,” Newt says. 

He pushes himself up with a groan. His legs feel a bit like jelly. Hermann gives him a once-over, so reminiscent of that first day in the lab that Newt’s breath catches in his throat. (He’s _super_ glad it wasn’t all just a dream.) “Your tattoos are lovely in color,” Hermann says. “As are your eyes.” He brushes the back of his hand against Newt’s cheek. “ _You_ are terribly lovely, Newton, if I might—”

Unable to help himself, and high on the relief of not being dead, Newt throws his arms around Hermann and kisses him soundly. Hermann is beet-red when Newt pulls away. "What was _that_?" he says, raising a hand to his mouth.

“It's called a French kiss,” Newt says.

“Can we do it again?” Hermann says.

“Hermann," Newt says. “We can do _whatever_ you want.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i made a "soundtrack" for this!! listen on Spotify [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2zPRo0yW1Ke3WKigobHesm?si=3pI-02wqTcGJ3uekqph2KA)
> 
> find me at my usual spots, twitter at hermanngaylieb, tumblr at hermannsthumb!


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